Rust Trailer Reveals First Footage From Alec Baldwin's Controversial Western

It's difficult to know how to feel about the potential release of Joel Souza's "Rust." This is the independently produced Western that became a major news story in 2021 when a .45 Colt revolver brandished by star Alec Baldwin — who continues to claim he did not pull the trigger, hence the bizarre wording here — fired a live round directly through the chest of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and into Souza's shoulder. The set's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, was ultimately found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for her negligence in loading the weapon. Meanwhile, involuntary manslaughter charges against Baldwin were dismissed with prejudice by New Mexico Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer.

Principal photography on "Rust" was eventually completed in 2023. This delay caused cast members Brady Noon and Jensen Ackles to drop out of the movie (they were replaced by, respectively, Patrick Scott McDermott and Josh Hopkins), but Souza and company dragged the film across the finish line and screened it at the Camerimage film festival on November 20, 2024. The film received a muted response, with some viewers feeling that it was difficult to judge the film on its own merits because every bit of gunplay in the movie reminded them of the tragedy that killed Hutchins.

"Rust" has secured theatrical distribution from Falling Forward Films (with Ascending Media Group handling its rollout on VOD) and will make its way to the big screen on May 2, 2025, at which point moviegoers will get a chance to see it for themselves — if they want to see it at all. Perhaps to boost the film's chances of getting a theatrical release, a trailer has been released to YouTube. How does it look?

If there's a good reason for "Rust" to receive a theatrical release, it's for Hutchins' cinematography to be appreciated on the big screen for the last time. Of course, unless Souza does some kind of visual annotation, we'll have no way of knowing which shots belong to Hutchins and which belong to her successor on the project, Bianca Cline.

Examining the film in this manner makes me extremely queasy and sad. Furthermore, the way Baldwin has behaved in the wake of the tragedy makes me reluctant to support the movie with my money. His continued insistence that he did not pull the trigger of the revolver (he's speculated that the disgruntled crew might've sabotaged the gun) comes off as insultingly ludicrous now that an FBI forensics lab has examined the weapon and determined that it could only have fired if the trigger was indeed pulled. Maybe he legitimately believes he didn't pull the trigger, but I'll take the FBI lab's word for it (though I might have second thoughts if it was a lab under the ultimate supervision of current FBI director Kash Patel).

I'm also very sensitive to Souza's anguish over this experience. In a 2024 interview with Vanity Fair, he revealed that the accident "ruined" him. "I don't mean that it put my career in ruins," he explained. "I mean, internally, the person I was just went away. That stopped." I understand why he finished "Rust," but I'd prefer not to watch a movie that permanently altered the emotional state of the filmmaker for the worse.

I regret ever watching Alex Proyas' "The Crow," which has a similarly tarnished legacy, and will never watch it again, so I seriously doubt I will ever lay eyes on "Rust." It'll just make me angry that incompetent people screwing around on what sounds like a shambolically run film set got an immensely talented cinematographer killed. It's outrageous that Hutchins isn't alive today, and I don't need to sit through a movie that will exacerbate that outrage.